Yu‐jui Chen and Pin‐yu Chu
2. Literature review
2.1 The development of citizen participation and electronic participation
Citizen participation, an accepted foundation of democracy, can be broadly defined as the processes by which public concerns, needs, and values are incorporated into decision‐making( Nabatchi, 2012). To improve legitimacy, transparency, accountability, and other democratic values in governance, public managers at all levels of government are expected to engage citizens in various public issues. Citizen participation occurs in many places and takes many forms. Arnstein( 1969) first provides a ladder of citizen participation that explains levels of interaction and influence between governments and citizens in the process of decision making from non‐participation to citizen power. To review the historical shifts of civic engagement in America, Cooper et al.( 2006) introduce a conceptual model to classify traditional forms of citizen participation such as social movements, voting, polling, legislative and administrative hearings, public forum, citizen jury, etc. into five categories: adversarial approach, electoral approach, legislative and administrative information, civil society, and deliberative approach,
Recently, scholars start to emphasize the concept of deliberative citizen participation, which increases involvement of the public in the affairs and decisions of the policy‐setting bodies( Rowe & Frewer, 2005). This recognition has come about as a result of two interrelated phenomena. First, Putnam( 1995) indicates that people’ s direct involvement in politics and public affairs has fallen progressively. Political participation is unequal in practice, the representation and influence are not dispensed at random but systematically biased on people of privileged, wealth, and better education( Lijphart, 1997). Second, deliberation is one of important factor in the democracy but hard to achieve with traditional participation mechanisms( Fishkin & Luskin, 2005). The decrease of deliberation goes side by side with the increase of political participation, which in turn affects the quality of public policy, and indirectly the well‐being of millions of people( Huang, 2008). Ideally, citizen power or deliberative approach can make up the shortage of representative democracy, but it is limited in practice because of high resource and cost requirements, difficulties in consensus‐building, rational ignorance of citizens in mass society, etc.( Irvin & Stansbury, 2004).
The development of information communication technologies( ICTs) provides many new ways of online participation such as online polls, discussion forums, and other forms of online consultation, and generates more deliberative participation from citizens( Milioni & Triga, 2012). Governments all over the world are increasingly becoming aware of the importance of citizen electronic participation in representative democracy. Within the framework of electronic government, government to citizen( G2C) and citizen to government( C2G) interaction particularly, e‐participation is defined as a participatory, inclusive, deliberative process of decision‐making, which can be achieved via( 1) e‐Information: using ICTs to increase the supply of information useful in the process of consultation and for decision making;( 2) e‐consultation: using ICTs to enhance consultation, and( 3) e‐decision making: using ICTs to support decision making by facilitating citizen participation( UN, 2003). This definition describes levels of online interaction and influence in the decision making process from elemental to more in‐depth participation( e. g., information communication, consultation, deliberation and decision‐making).
To improve the unequal participation, applications of web 2.0 tools are becoming more and more important, especially the use of social networking technologies. Unlike traditional participation, social media enable more direct, real‐time and networked ways of citizen participation in governance( Näkki et al., 2011), and offer opportunity to communicate efficiently in deliberative environment( Robertson et al., 2010). Osimo( 2008) categorizes six types of citizen engagement and participation using social networking technologies:( 1) politicians using web 2.0 applications for a more direct contact with the electorate. For example, Nicolas Sarkozy, Jean‐Marie Le Pen, Ségolène Royal, three candidates of the 2007 presidential election in France, all open the head offices in the Second Life. President Obama in the U. S. also uses Facebook pages, Twitter to contact with people and to build his image( Zavattaro, 2010);( 2) bringing citizens’ participation upstream: For example, citizens are allowed to share their points of view on government documents in the Commentonthis. com( Osimo, 2008). Slovenian government provides the participative platform“ Predlagam vladi”( I propose to government) in order to include citizens in policy process( Oblak‐Crnic et al. 2010);( 3) monitoring public representatives: For example, Theyworkforyou. com provides useful information to monitor representatives( Osimo, 2008). I‐Vod supplies session information of legislative yuan in Taiwan( Ku & He, 2009);( 4) monitoring administrative procedures: For instance, Planningalerts. com and Farmsubsidy. org enable
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